Rejected on the Seventh Day

 

Dear HRs of all the companies I have applied to,

Thank you for your interest in ruining my weekend. I’ve been rejected more times than I’ve blinked today. In fact, Gmail now auto-sorts my inbox into ‘Primary’, ‘Promotions’, and ‘Soul-Crushing Disappointments’. Sometimes I think the rejection emails are unionizing. 

Anyway, just to make it worse, I got rejected by you and your esteemed organizations on a Sunday.

Sunday. The day of rest. The day the Lord set aside for mercy and naps. It is stated in the commandments as clear as day: Thou shalt not reject on the Sabbath. Apparently, HR didn’t get the memo.

It wasn’t even for a big job; not some glamorous internship or a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity. Nah, this was for stacking things. Stacking. Things. I don’t even know what I did wrong. Did I fail to demonstrate sufficient shelf enthusiasm? Did I not seem like someone who could handle a box of beans with grace and professionalism? Did my resume not scream the obvious desired skills like “ability to Tetris several boxes or ninja-like reflexes in the face of tumbling cardboard”?

I passed your assessments. I rearranged your hypothetical stockroom. I even smiled through that grim video interview where I talked to a virtual manager named “Amy” who said things like “Tell me about a time you overcame adversity” as if your 5-stage hiring process for a part-time job wasn’t adversity enough.

And don’t get me started on the group interview. It was a fever dream of over-compensation and fake cheerfulness, as if stacking things was everyone’s dream job. As if we were 5 years old once saying, “Mum, I want to stack cans of peaches and peas when I grow up!” I needed therapy afterwards just to regain my self-confidence.

And still, rejected. On a Sunday.

I shouldn’t take it personally, you say. Oh, but I do. Because rejection emails always start with the same cursed line. Don’t thank me. I am not interested anymore, bruv. I am broke and spiritually bankrupt. I gave you my time, my sincerity, my cover letter (ugh), my heart, and a disturbingly detailed list of personal information, and you have given me nothing but emotional debt.

And then there’s the classic reason, my personal favourite: Lack of experience.

I got rejected from internships for the lack of experience. Internships! The literal purpose of which is to GAIN experience. How does that even work? Pray, do tell.
Should I have started working while I was still a fetus? “Good morning, this is fetus A, just checking in to say that I have completed the required 300 hours of team-building”

Oh, I am sorry, I didn’t know you accidentally advertised a job meant for God Himself.

It’s demotivating, but I can’t stop applying. I need to survive — yes, survive, not live. “Survival of the fittest,” you say.
Bro, how can I be fit if I don’t survive?
How can I survive if I’m not fit?
LET ME LIVE.

It’s funny, though. Every rejection letter teaches me something new. For example, I now know that “We’ve decided to move forward with other candidates” is corporate for “Although we said this role was entry-level, it actually isn’t. We chose someone with 5 years of experience in this very specific niche field. Screw you :) ”
And “Please consider applying to us in the future” only applies if you haven’t already unsuccessfully applied in the past 6 months because well, we don’t actually care about you, loser.

Sometimes, I try to read between the lines of your rejections like they’re love letters gone wrong. “It’s not you, it’s us.”
Except no, it is me. I’m not qualified enough. Or I’m over qualified, which is apparently a crime. Or I wasn’t “the right fit,” which I imagine means you found someone who lives and breathes Excel and dreams of KPI dashboards.

One company rejected me twice for the same position on two different weeks. I can only assume they thought the first rejection didn't make a strong enough impact, so they sent a backup to make sure I really got the message.

At this point, I think I need a support group. Rejected, Sad Graduates— the RSG. It’s like AA, but for a bunch of sunken college graduates who meet weekly to discuss the trauma of Applicant Tracking Systems and to collectively scream into the void. We’d share coping strategies like refreshing our inboxes every ten minutes and pretending we’re “manifesting opportunities” instead of slowly decaying. 

And yet, I keep applying. Because what else can I do?

I am a recent graduate. I have ambition, dreams, a collection of tote bags, and a student loan that’s growing like a sentient creature in the dark. I wake up to “We regret to inform you” like it’s a morning mantra — a very sad mantra, I tell you.

Sometimes I think rejections have personalities.
There’s the cold, indifferent kind that lands in your inbox like a slap.
The vague, passive-aggressive one that reads like: “You’re great! Just not for us. Or anyone.”
And then there’s the worst one — no reply at all. The ghosting. The silence. No closure, just a haunting sense that my résumé is floating through cyberspace, trapped in a limbo where all the “unsuccessful” applications go to die.

And yet, despite all this, I still open my laptop every morning and hit “Apply.” Because apparently, I’m a masochist. Or an optimist. Or both.

So, tomorrow, I will apply again. Maybe to another stacking job. Maybe to an office. Maybe to the frickin’ moon.

Because the thing about rejection is that it’s only temporary, or so I have been told by some unemployed motivational guru on Instagram. Well, until it isn’t.

But still, I can’t get over the audacity of being rejected on a Sunday. 

Please never do this again.

Faithfully yours (against my will),
an unpaid intern of fate

Update: This piece was rejected by a magazine called ‘Rejection Letters’. Yes, the irony was not lost on me. At least, it wasn’t on a Sunday. Progress!

 

Doodles inspired by duck memes found on Pinterest. Tried so hard to find the original artists but Pinterest is an ocean of unattributed content  :(

Also, Ross from FRIENDS :)